On Evolutionary Psychology, Intelligent Design, and Scuba Gear

[bloodyrosemccoy]

First of all, when you get down past all the strawmen and junk science and media coverage, there is actually simple truth in the idea of evolutionary psychology: that an environment could shape the overall trends in inherited behavioral characteristics in a population. That’s established well enough in the way different species themselves behave differently.

The trouble with the science of evolutionary psychology is not just in explaining such universal characteristics, but in finding those characteristics in the first place. With every single attempt to explain Why We’re Like That, you first have to prove that we are like that—which is kind of impossible when you consider culture and neurology and individual experience and that obnoxious ability we have to rethink situations and alter our behavior—not to mention the scientist’s own bias. Me, I think the idea is fair enough, but I dare you to try illustrating it without turning into a douchebag.

But here’s the thing that interests me the most with people’s reactions to it: in all the crazy arguments for and against whatever individual characteristic we’re looking at, both sides treat the idea of an “adaptation” as, well, Ape Law. Regardless of whether someone has managed to isolate a real trait, you get one side arguing “It is TOTALLY an adaptation and therefore I am perfectly justified in behaving like an ass this way!” and the others saying “It’s not an adaptation and therefore you are not justified!”

My question for both sides is this: since when did natural selection, a process that built the vertebrate eye upside-down and backwards, put tits on boars, and left wings on ostriches, become intelligent design?

Because that’s what it gets treated like. Instinct is handy, but dude, it’s not some kind of rule that God encoded into DNA as part of The Perfect Plan. Evolution is a process, but it’s not an efficient process, and there’s no trim end product with all the RIGHT traits. You can trick animal instincts so that they work against the animal. Some instincts may be maladaptive, or obsolete, or just kinda there. And fortunately, especially for humans, evolutionary traits can be overridden. Me, I’ve got a nice big brain full of culture and experience and analytical ability and empathy, all of which help me to analyze an impulse to do something, decide if it is the right thing to do in this situation, and then act according to that decision. And shit, everything from scuba masks to ski jumping, cooking to medicine, is a flip-off to evolution. Why is the behavior so sacred?

Basically, I don’t fucking CARE if rape or war or murder are adaptive, instinctive behaviors. That has no bearing on whether they’re things you can or should do. You want to use what natural selection gave you? Fine, dammit, you’ve got a good three pounds of complex neurology sitting just inside your head to work with. Use it. And quit saying that natural selection is Ape Law.

Comments

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

Because evopsych is mostly used to find excuses for behaviors that would make barbarians blush. It's not sincere scientific inquiry; it's just-so stories designed to reinforce the dominant paradigm.

Also, why are you never on MSN?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Exactly my point--the assumption that "it's an INSTINCT" makes some hideous behavior okay is the biggest fallacy. Whether or not something IS an instinct (which I DARE someone to actually prove) is beside the point.

I maintain that it's a huge luxury for us to be able to actually consider our own impulses and second-guess ourselves. But alas, some don't seem to agree ...

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

The ability to reconsider and alter our behavior on our timescale, rather than evolution's, is our most valuable adaptation. Right up there with our big squishy frontal lobes.

And like, try to remember you have IM, because I'm trying to write something and it's in my head, I can see it, but it won't come out right on paper and I need heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*remembers*

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Oh, and: because I KEEP FORGETTING I HAVE IM. I am apparently not in a real-time-talky mood enough to remember as of the last several months. :P

[luinmir.livejournal.com]

I love you and intend to repost this every time I see someone talking about evolutionary psych.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks. I'm editing a story I wrote that relies heavily on just how great it is to be ABLE to suppress instinct like that, so this is me trying to work out my thoughts.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

Huh. I forget that people assign values and intention to things like that... yay ivory tower? (Much like that one-month summer intro philosophy class I took, in which it took 3 weeks for a bunch of the boys to realize that no, the teacher didn't actually espouse the viewpoints she was presenting to us, that these were just "what some old dead guys said", and they didn't actually need to argue her out of these obviously erroneous opinions after all. *siiiiiiiiigh* MENTAL FLEXIBILITY, PEOPLE.)

It's also a lot like those people who declare they only eat "natural" things because "natural = good". To the extreme of "everything natural = good, because natural = good". Sometimes "green = good", therefore I am a vegetarian (of the "eat just salads" type, not the "plan out a balanced vegan diet" type). Stay away from unnatural "vitamin pills", just take herbal capsules! Natural disasters are just nature's way of dealing with humans overrunning the Earth! And of course, conveniently, these tend to be people who've never actually experienced a natural disaster. I want to feed them hemlock and sprouted potatoes.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

It's also a lot like those people who declare they only eat "natural" things because "natural = good". To the extreme of "everything natural = good, because natural = good". Sometimes "green = good", therefore I am a vegetarian (of the "eat just salads" type, not the "plan out a balanced vegan diet" type). Stay away from unnatural "vitamin pills", just take herbal capsules!

My usual reaction to that argument is to point out that belladonna is all natural.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

In the Fairhaven Cafeteria once, back when I was up at WWU, the Pizza cook topped the pizzas with sticks and leaves from the pond outside. Fuckin' Hippies ate it right up. Loved it. Because it was "natural".

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I like the alternative medicine packages that tell you they CONTAIN NO CHEMICALS! Why am I paying for a box of vacuum?

[matthias-wave.livejournal.com]

Apparently these people never took a middle school science class, where we were told at least once a year that water qualifies as a chemical.

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

Icon love!

(here from MetaQuotes)

[nobleplatypus]

I saw similar reactions to a personality sorter we did in college. "Wait, there's an EXCUSE for my appalling behavior? That means I'm entitled to behave in an appalling manner!" Being able to find a reason for behavior does not make that behavior reasonable.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

EXACTLY. This is the same bogus leap in logic used to support "Social Darwinism". Just because something does happen some way in the natural world doesn't mean it should in human behavior!

Also, metaquoted.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, both social Darwinism and just-so evolutionary psychology have the same underlying philosophy: "This justifies my screwing you over." We can do better than that.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Also, poor Metaquotes. They're getting a feedback loop of evolutionary blathering! ;)

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

But it's FUN evolutionary blathering...

[beccastareyes]

It's a shame, because I think it's fascinating. Just... human behavior developed for small bands of hunter-gatherers in Africa. So, most likely:

1. What works for a small group of people doesn't work for us now, because our cultural evolution has vastly outstripped our biological evolution.

2. Even back then, I have a feeling if Bob was being a dick, eventually the tribe would get sick of him and leave him for the lions. Or at least not invite him along on hunts unless they really needed an extra body.

(Also, a lot of evopsych seems to depend on having good animal models. Any similarity we have to our nearest neighbors helps, since we can trace out simpler roots of behavior. Which makes family structure hard, since chimps and bonobos don't have the same structures humans do*.)

* At least the serial monogamy. Well aware that humans have a wide variety of family structures based on culture and resources and the individual human's ability to play nice with others.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

I like this comment!

[beccastareyes]

Thank you

[chairman-wow.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

That habit people have to draw a line between 'natural' things (instinct/emotion, raw plants, living in caves or something, I don't know) and 'artificial' things (thought/analysis, processed food, telephones that can acess wikipedia) seems sillier and sillier to me the more I think about it. All the artificial things are just as natural as the natural ones and vice versa! (Though I catch myself tending to draw the distinction, too. Like the sci-fi trope of the cold, logical robot and the emotional human -- the dichotomy is just stuck in my head.)


Regarding evolutionar psychology as a science, from what I recall, in other species, you figure out of a behaviour is an evolutionary adaption by comparing closely related species that live in different environments. So since humans don't really have a closely related species it's pretty much impossible to investigate it rigorously.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

have you read Lee Silver's book "Challenging Nature"? He absolutely tears those "natural vs artificial" arguments to shreds.

[chairman-wow.livejournal.com]

I have not, but I shall add it to my to-read list!

[denelian.livejournal.com]

here via metaquotes [just so you know why random person #596,792,439 is here...]


my favorite joke about evolution, ever, and i can't remember what book it's from! "the brain? it's designed as a cooling mechanism..."

heh.


is evo-psych ever used for anything other than a justification of the status quo? sigh. i hate evo-psych..

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

This. So very much this. I'm fond of reminding everyone who keeps asking "so why did we evolve X trait?" that not all traits "selected" by evolution have an advantage. In order to survive in the population, a trait simply has to confer no particular disadvantage compared to another extant version of the same genes.

Also, I don't know where you're finding these idiots who claim that an evolutionary tendency to behave a certain way excuses any sort of assholism, but they need to STFU. The only reason I am interested in knowing which, if any, behavioral traits are truly innate to humanity is so that we can figure out how to work with those behaviors to our best advantage. Perhaps the simplest and somewhat silly example of this is the justification for team sports as a healthy way to channel aggression and group-bonding behavior. We don't need wars-- we have football!